Every Now and Then

It doesn't happen all that often, but periodically we get a strange, but welcome, visitor to Rhodes Point. Actually, we have killed a lot of different species from the blind. I hunted Hospital Point for years and killed about 5 ducks total besides Bluebills and Canvasbacks. Our new blind generally produces one or two bonus ducks, or geese, each season.

The Snow Goose came all the way from Gray Point flying right along side a Lesser Blackback Gull. It was noon on January 1st about 5-6 years ago. I was just sitting there gazing at the only 2 birds in the sky when I realized that one of them was not a Seagull. It now hangs on the wall of my family room.

I know a fellow who is writing a book on duck hunting on the New River and according to him, nobody ever heard of a Snow Goose being killed there. Total strangers used to stop by the blind and ask me about it.

The Canada Goose that Kelly is holding was one out of a nice sized flock. Of course with the Brannen Luck, I was out in the boat chasing a crippled White Wing Scoter for Mike and the Geese went right over the blind. Mike missed and Kelly killed one. I always kept a few heavy 'goose loads' sitting on the blind shelf, just in case. When Kelly saw the geese coming she reloaded with a #6 Heavy Shot water kill load that was on the shelf, instead of a goose load. She got her bird though.

The 2 big Mallard drakes were pretty neat. Right at shooting time 3 puddleducks came over Kelly and I from behind. It was a very dark cloudy morning (at least at 0645 it was) and I assumed they were Black Ducks. We both shot and thought maybe we crippled one, but never saw it on the water. A couple feathers was all. We were both crushed by our poor shooting. 2 hours later the day had turned into a real Bluebird day. Wind and clouds all gone, just bright sun and glare on the water. Kelly suddenly whispered to me that there were two ducks on the water just beyond the point to our left. I glassed them and saw the 2 nice Mallards. I called for a few minutes and they came right to us. We both had ours mounted. I assume we did cripple or at least scare the third bird out of that bunch that passed us early, but those 2 drakes couldn't stay away.

We killed a Mallard drake and a drake Black Duck that were flying together one time. Even had an immature Eider cross the decoys one day and I didn't shoot because I wasn't sure what it was until too late.

Nice to kill an odd bird every once in a while, but the Bluebills are what keep us going back.